


We Need To Talk About Cersei

by catherineflowers



Series: We Need To Talk About ... [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Feels, F/M, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 16:46:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14524947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/catherineflowers
Summary: "After he gets out of the shower, maybe in the morning, maybe tomorrow, maybe not, but at some point, if he wants to be a better man, if he wants this love for Brienne to change everything, he will have to talk about Cersei."





	We Need To Talk About Cersei

**1\. Brienne**

She likes the sameness of them – moving in tandem with him, the muscles under their skin, the blur of body heat and the tangle of sweat and limbs. The sighs of breath that mix and join in their mouths. The grasp of hands on the pillow, and the shared goal – rising, rising, mounting, and then peaking. His grimace and her groan. The tears in both their eyes and the kisses that feel like melting into him. Becoming part of him. She’s never known this.

She has always been alone. An only child, no friends, an isolated, awkward adult. 

But this – this, oh this! This delicious human contact, this melding of souls and bodies and this connection and allowing herself to trust … This she likes. 

**2\. Jaime**

He likes the differences. Opening his green eyes to see her blue ones glazed with pleasure. Paler skin than his, flushed a deep red. His fingers laced in her hair - hair that is a different colour to his hair. 

He likes that she is big and strong, that she takes him by surprise with her strength and with her truth. When she says something, she means it – he doesn’t have to tie himself in knots working out her agenda. She doesn’t have to need something before she needs him. He’s never known this.

He likes that she has tears in her eyes every time. That she is incoherent with pleasure for a few minutes after they are done. He likes being a precious gift. She is a gift too, one that he likes being able to savour. He is spent, but he doesn’t have to dress and run - he can lie here on top of her, inside her, and take his time on these kisses. These kisses! He can learn her, the taste of her tongue, the scent of her skin. It’s so delicious not to know her at all.

**3\. Brienne**

His kisses slow to a sweet slide of lips down her neck and then ribs and then her belly and then he’s lifting her hips and burying his face between her thighs. His mouth is electric – she can’t contain herself. One hand grasping his hair and one in a fist pressed to her mouth to stifle her cries. Oh, he’s good.

After he has taken her apart with his tongue, he smiles a smug smile and goes off to shower in her tiny bathroom. Brienne lights a cigarette, opens the windows and lets the sweat cool off her body in the summer breeze while she smokes it on the bed. Happy but not happy.

Warning bells are ringing. He’s Jaime Lannister after all – a name said more in sneer than with respect, despite his family’s fearsome reputation. And the last three times they’ve been together, just when she started to believe this was really going somewhere, something shifted. She’s started to feel like he’s holding something back.

**4\. Jaime**

He is a liar. He knows this is an oasis. After he gets out of the shower, maybe in the morning, maybe tomorrow, maybe not, but at some point, if he wants to be a better man, if he wants this love for Brienne to change everything, he will have to talk about Cersei. 

The thought makes him sick. Where can he begin? Should he start chronologically, talk about how their childhood threw them together and tore them apart repeatedly, how having a secret like sex was a power when he and his twin were powerless? Their own private fuck-you to their father. 

But then he would have to talk about later, when they were adults with lives and responsibilities, when their father was well in the background, when Cersei had a husband, for fuck’s sake. He would have to tell her how it grew into something co-dependent, twisted, where Cersei would use and manipulate him and he would take out his frustrations on her, even when she wasn’t always willing? How can he talk about that? How can he ever make Brienne understand? It’s passed forgiveness.

He is, after all, a deviant. A man who has fathered four children with his sister. A man who has known nothing else but a love so warped he can’t recognise the real thing when it is in front of him. It’s going to be hard to get over that.

Maybe a lie would be kinder. Tell her it meant nothing, that fucking his own twin was nothing more than a form of masturbation. But somehow that seems worse, and it’s not honest. He can’t be with Brienne if he’s not honest. 

**5\. Brienne**

He comes out of the shower and back into her bedroom, a towel around his waist and another in his good hand, drying his hair. She nods at the clock on her nightstand – he has twenty minutes before his curfew. She has to get ready for work.

He smiles regretfully, and sits on the edge of her bed to dress in silence. Boxers and a black shirt. Dark blue jeans. Boots, cut high enough to cover the monitor on his ankle. 

When he is dressed, he kisses her slowly goodbye and promises he will see her tomorrow. His eyes are soft, but there is a tiredness, a worry in them. She doesn’t know why. She caresses his face and presses another kiss to his mouth. She hates seeing him worried.

**6\. Jaime**

In the dark, on the stiff, creaky fold-out bed in Tyrion’s spare room, Jaime thinks of Brienne and wonders if she’s thinking of him. 

He thinks of Cersei too, wondering if the restraining order has made her happy. If having him arrested and imprisoned, if exposing their children’s parentage and painting it all as non-consensual, has made her happy.

He wonders if she knows what happened to him in prison, what happened to his hand. Does she know about the beatings, the abuse? Does she know about the rape? He wonders if that would make her happy too, that it has taken three months for him to stop sobbing into his pillow every night, that it will likely take years for the nightmares to stop?

He flicks the TV on and flicks the channels. Gets up to make himself a cup of tea. 

Night times are the hardest. 

**7\. Brienne**

It’s 3am and she’s walking home from work, a cigarette in her mouth and a carton of take-out in her hand. Her hand throbs, knuckles swollen and red from her scuffle with the twentieth guy that night who wanted to knock her into the dust. 

She’s used to it. Past midnight, after the first three beers, the female bouncer always looks like an easy victory. She enjoys teaching them the error of their ways.

She checks her phone – Jaime has replied to her text, wishing her a good night. He sent a little sticker too, an hour later – a jumping cat with a heart in its hands. She sends one back – a teddy bear blowing a kiss.

As she’s unlocking her apartment door, her phone begins to ring.

**8\. Jaime**

She sounds tired – he’s almost sorry he phoned. But her voice is rich and throaty and full of happiness at the sound of his voice and he just needed to hear that.

On impulse, he invites her over. Tyrion hasn’t forbidden guests, but he hasn’t exactly agreed to people turning up in the wee small hours either. They’ll have to be quiet.

**9\. Brienne**

Jaime’s brother lives a block away from her apartment. It’s a rich man’s building, with a doorman and a concierge. She’s buzzed straight in and escorted to the elevator – Jaime can’t come down during his curfew hours without violating his parole.

He’s waiting at the door, in his PJs and a t-shirt that clings to his arms and chest. He holds a finger to his lips and pulls her inside, into his arms. His kiss tastes of tea and his eyes are dark and haunted. She knows that look well.

He takes her hand, laces his fingers into hers and pulls her through the dark rooms. She thinks they are heading for the bedroom, but they aren’t. He pushes open the patio doors with their joined hands and takes her out onto the balcony.

From up here, the city is laid out before them, lights and music and the noise of cars. It’s a breathtaking, very expensive view, and Jaime watches her take it in, the city lights dancing in the darkness in his eyes.

**10\. Jaime**

They fuck on a lawn chair, as quiet as they can, her astride his lap with her hands in his hair and her tits in his mouth. Public and obscene. 

Afterward, panting and shuddering, he clings to her. She clings back, stronger, cradling his head to her breasts and dropping feather-light kisses to the top of his head. He needs her. He needs her. He needs to be hers. He needs to be rid of Cersei.

They sink into a helpless kiss and he reflexively tries to wipe his tears with his right hand. Then he remembers, sees his stump, and it breaks him. He dissolves into wracking sobs, hiding his face in her neck.

**11\. Brienne**

She takes him to bed and cuddles him like a child until he sleeps. Night times are the hardest. 

She remembers it well – it was one of the reasons she chose night work as her profession. Too much time to be alone in the dark, with dark thoughts and memories was never good. It didn’t help.

She is stronger now - seventeen years will do that – but she remembers how it was when she was Jaime. Broken, bleeding, an open wound. Terrified and horrified and humiliated. 

For him, of course, there’s so much more. He’s lost his life, his career, his position. His hand. She’d watched him closely at the Rape Survivor groups – he never spoke in the group sessions, but he’d been there, every time.

When they paired off, he’d headed straight for her. Said he’d admired her bravery and honesty in sharing her experience. He’d made some jibes about her height and her profession, but then he’d shared with her.

No one knew, he said. He’d never told a soul. But he’d shared it all with her, the full horror of what had happened to him in prison. She’d sat there, sick and cold, eyes wide and mouth open. When he’d finished, he’d almost collapsed in her arms. 

They’d gone out together, found a bar. Got insanely drunk and ended up in bed together. Both each other’s first since they’d been raped.

**12\. Jaime**

He thinks that maybe he has fallen in love with her.

He’s spooned against her in the bed, the strong summer sunshine streaming through the windows on the peach perfection of her skin. She’s fast asleep.

Is this what love is like? Peace and quiet, beauty in details, the sound of her breath? The feeling of his lips on her shoulder and his cock softening inside her, the warmth of her.

But he can’t love her. He can’t love her yet. Not with the spectre of Cersei still there. He can’t expect her to take him like this. 

“Brienne?” he says. Even her name feels beautiful in his mouth, the sounds round and rich. “Wake up.”

“Hmmm?” She opens a single bright blue eye.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Sure,” she mumbles.

“You read the papers, right? You watch the news?”

“Mmm.”

“Then you know why I was in prison, don’t you.”

She opens her eyes fully. Focuses on him. Her mouth draws into a straight, serious line. “Your sister,” she says at last. Carefully. 

He nods. “What do you think about that?”

She tucks her bright blonde hair behind her ears. “I don’t know. I … I assumed that a lot of it was circus, with your father being a Senator and you on your way up.”

He grins a little at that. “There was a lot of circus.”

“Is it true?”

“Yes, it is.”

“The children too?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” She is sitting up now, her knees tucked to her chest. Her chin resting on them.

This is a mistake. He doesn’t have the first clue how to talk about this, he doesn’t know how to make it okay. He can talk to Brienne about anything - prison, losing his hand, about the rape … he can show this amazing woman the most intimate parts of his soul.

But Cersei … Cersei …

He has no words to talk about Cersei.

**13\. Brienne**

She dresses in silence. He watches her, cradling his tea cup, his long hair falling into his eyes. She doesn’t know what he wants her to say. Does he want forgiveness, absolution? Does he want her to tell him she doesn’t find it abhorrent?

She can’t do that.

She reaches for her keys on the bedside table and he reaches for her, covering her hand with his. She pulls away and he reacts as if she’s slapped him. 

He has nothing to say, so she leaves.

**14\. Jaime**

He’s fucked everything up. He might as well fuck it up further.

He goes out and buys a prepay phone, with cash. He dials her number, but it’s been disconnected. Of course it has.

He roots through Tyrion’s things and finds her new number in a little black address book in a box at the back of a closet. Hidden, obviously, from him.

He sits and stares at it for half an hour before punching it into the phone.

It rings twice. He hangs it up. It takes him an hour to try it again. This time, she answers straight away.

“Hello?” Cersei’s voice is smaller than he remembered. More frightened. He hangs up.

She calls him back. He doesn’t answer.

She sends a text. A single word.

_Jaime?_

He turns the phone off. Leaves the apartment and takes a bus to the other side of the city. To the riverside. He hangs over the edge of the bridge as far as he dares and throws the phone as hard as he can into the water.

When he gets back, Brienne is waiting for him.

**15\. Brienne**

He looks like shit. He takes her cigarette from her with a shaking hand, smokes it even though he doesn’t smoke.

They sit together on the steps to Tyrion’s building in the late evening sunshine, his head on her shoulder, her arm around his back. He doesn’t say a word, just kisses her softly.

The words don’t matter. She doesn’t care about the words, or about his past, or about his sister. She cares about him, about helping him to rebuild a new man from the old. She cares about the strength she finds when she’s with him, how he helps her feel like she’s alive and living for the first time in her life.

She doesn’t need to talk about Cersei. Cersei isn’t part of Jaime any more.

**Author's Note:**

> Thought I'd have a go at the Modern AU since I have enjoyed reading so many brilliant takes on it.
> 
> This is only my second Jaime/Brienne and it got a little angsty. Apologies if that's not your bag. Hope you enjoyed, please be gentle, I'm still getting back on this horse after a loooooong hiatus!


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